"Drawing a Clear Difference"
Good Friday
April 10, 2009
Mark 14:1—15:47
"It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened
Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to
arrest Him by stealth and kill Him."
This is how it begins. With the intent of murder. Not with reverent
thoughts about God’s grace in the Passover Festival. Not with
preparation for the Passover worship. With a consuming desire to rid
themselves of this person who was getting in their way.
We know the Passion story of our Lord well. We know the details, we
know the purpose. Perhaps we know it too well as a story and not well
enough as the Gospel. Jesus’ Passion is the Gospel. Who Jesus is and
what He did is what saves.
How the Passion of our Lord played out we rightly call a story, as
individuals acted and events unfolded. There is a difference in the
people of the Passion account: those who rejected the Suffering Savior
and those who saw in Him their only hope.
The unrighteous and the righteous, the unsaved and the saved,
unbelievers and believers, non-Christians and Christians. But in
another sense, the two kinds of people in the Passion account are
Jesus Christ and everyone else. Christians and non-Christians alike
are sinners. Those who believe in Christ are every bit as sinful as
those who don’t. As important, Jesus died for both.
So what’s the difference? How are the “everybody else” divided into
two groups? The difference is, who do you want to be your Savior? Do
you want to go it alone, or place your eternal salvation in Christ
alone?
The irony is rich that those very religious leaders were seeking to
murder Jesus while Jesus was using that very death to bring about
salvation for them. On the other hand, the woman Jesus praises
actually can accept no praise of her own account because her act of
worship toward Jesus is one of acknowledging that she doesn’t deserve
salvation from Him.
It is remarkable that Judas betrayed Jesus to death while Jesus
willingly died for Judas. On the other hand, Jesus’ other disciples
were ready and willing to gather in worship with Jesus in the
celebration of the Passover, submitting to Jesus’ gift to them of His
body and blood for the forgiveness of their sins. They acknowledged
that they were sinners and in need of the forgiveness.
It would be easy to paint the religious leaders and Judas as evil and
the bad guys and the woman and the other disciples as the good guys.
But what does Jesus say of the disciples? You will all fall away. The
true difference here is that Jesus alone can save and He alone does.
We, whether we believe in Him or not, are unable to save ourselves.
But not only can we not save ourselves, we don’t deserve to be saved.
We are born in sin and actively sin each day. The woman and the
disciples were no different from the religious leaders and Judas in
this regard. Where the difference came in is that they believed that
they were utterly lost, not deserving of salvation, had no hope apart
from Jesus and His suffering and death.
The sinful nature is a fighter. What is Peter’s response to Jesus? I
won’t fall away! I’m faithful! Yeah, right. He was no better than the
religious leaders who actively sought to murder Jesus and Judas who
actively betrayed Him. Oh yeah, and all the other disciples joined in
the chorus with Peter; they were no better either.
But maybe you’re not convinced. Maybe you still harbor some good
feelings about yourself. That you could somehow rise above what Peter
did in denying his Lord. That the praise Jesus bestows on the woman
could be given to you because, well, you deserve it. The further we
get into the Passion account, the further we see how utterly incapable
anyone in this story is of accomplishing anything of lasting
value—except, of course, Christ. In Gethsemane, He stayed awake. Not
the disciples. They couldn’t even stay awake! How were they supposed
to save themselves? How could they have any hope within themselves if
they couldn’t even be there for their Lord?
We too easily rationalize away our sinful nature. If you think Pilate
was a bad guy, you’re right. But we are just like him. He tried to
rationalize his way out of condemning Jesus to death. He knew Jesus
was innocent but put himself before Jesus. One of them was going
down—Pilate politically, Jesus to death—Pilate chose for Jesus to go
down. The Roman soldiers were just doing their job—and enjoying the
perks of their job of making the pain of crucifixion even worse in
brutalizing Him. Yes, these men, Pilate and the soldiers, treated our
Savior awfully. But do we do any different when we willfully sin as if
we can be good Christians and hold on to our sinful desires?
There were some standing beneath the cross who exemplify the proper
attitude a Christian ought to have, in the same way the woman who
anointed Him had: humbly looking up to the one who is suffering in
their place. Knowing that they are the ones who deserve to up there,
who deserve eternal separation from God. The women and the centurion
who stood looking at Christ on the cross are not examples to us for
anything that was good in themselves, but of their repentance and
faith in the only one who could save them.
It begins with those who would seek to destroy Jesus. It ends in one
sense with their successful accomplishment. But really it begins with
Jesus’ choice to submit to the murderous intent. It plays out with
Jesus humbly suffering the attacks of His enemies and patiently
bearing with the weakness of His followers. Ultimately, it ends in
triumph. Not for those who wanted Jesus dead. For the world. For every
sinner. The death of Jesus was what He humbly chose.
There is a clear difference between the people in the Gospel Passion
account: some rejected Christ, others looked to Him as their only
hope. Just as there is a clear difference today, some don’t believe in
Christ and others do. But there is no difference with any of us in our
sin and our need. We see in the people of the Passion account in
contrast to Christ that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves
and have no eternal hope of ourselves. Our salvation is in Christ. Our
hope is in Him. All are in need of salvation.
The difference our Lord draws is not between us and others but between
Himself and everyone. He suffered in the place of everyone, He died
for all. What those there intended was a world of difference in what
Christ intended. He used the death they sought in order to save them
and us and everyone. The difference is that we have no hope apart from
Him while He is our hope, our life, and our salvation. Amen.
SDG
--
Pastor Paul L. Willweber
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS]
San Diego, California
princeofpeacesd.net
three-taverns.net
It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything
except where the marks of the Church are concerned.
[Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian]
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